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For 41 Years, Town Cheers Danny’s Boys

Coach Danny Miles calls Oregon Tech “my Notre Dame.”Credit
Andy Atkinson for The New York Times

KLAMATH FALLS, Ore. — Danny Miles is a coach.

For four decades, he has coached here, mostly basketball, through the collapse of the logging industry and the Klamath Basin water crisis, for more wins than all but three coaches at any level in the history of college basketball. He turned down other jobs, at bigger schools, in larger towns. He was fired and rehired, divorced and remarried, thought he had prostate cancer and found out he did not. At the Oregon Institute of Technology, where they slashed his athletics budget so low at times he almost quit, they also named the basketball court after him.

So there Danny Miles stood in late December, pacing the sideline at Danny Miles Court. The night before, his players stumbled at home, losing there for the first time since 2008, ending the nation’s longest home winning streak. This had produced an unintended casualty: Miles’s voice.

His players, the Hustlin’ Owls, known as Danny’s Boys to the locals, strained to hear the instructions Miles whispered. They took their cues from the color of his bald head, which turns crimson when embarrassed, scarlet when angry and beet red when ready to explode. On this night, when his team topped Concordia University of Portland on the way to obtaining the No. 1 ranking for N.A.I.A. Division II colleges, Miles rarely reddened.

Win No. 954 was in hand.

Most 66-year-olds collect social security. Miles, while technically retired, still collects basketball victories like stamps. Before this season, Oregon Tech totaled every game Miles ever coached, at different levels of basketball, softball and baseball. The count was 1,816 victories. The walls to his upstairs “man cave” contain letters from famous basketball coaches, among them Mike Krzyzewski, Dean Smith and Bobby Knight, and two presidents, Bill Clinton and George W. Bush. His bust resides in three halls of fame.

This season, his Owls, still Hustlin’, have already qualified for their national tournament, held next month in Point Lookout, Mo. They did so despite the death of Nathan Maddox, a redshirt sophomore who committed suicide Feb. 12. Maddox left a four-page note, Miles said, and died with a Bible in his lap, turned to John 3:16. Miles called the past two weeks the toughest stretch of his career.

For years at the school he calls “my Notre Dame,” Miles drove the team van to away games, washed the sweat from uniforms and endured 13-hour bus rides up mountain passes and through storms. “All the way home, I’m thinking, As soon as I get back, I’m turning in my resignation. This time, for sure, I’m going to retire,” Miles said. “And here I am.”

He shrugged.

“I’m a coach.”

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Win No. 900: Of the victories Miles can remember, none meant more than this milestone, reached in February 2010. Oregon Tech trounced Southern Oregon, its biggest rival and Miles’s alma mater, while wearing pink jerseys to raise awareness for breast cancer. (The institute’s former president, Martha Anne Dow, died of breast cancer in 2007.)

In honor of 900, the school gave Miles his own parking spot. For weeks he left his cramped, windowless office and found the car parked one spot left, or two spots right, of his assigned space. He wondered if he had sustained too many concussions playing college football. He told his wife he needed to see a doctor. At that point his assistants told him the truth about the car.

They had been moving it.

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The streets of downtown Klamath Falls, where the Umpqua Dairy serves its signature ice cream and the Daily Bagel names sandwiches after newspapers, feel transported from a simpler time, which, most definitely, this is not. For all of its charm, Main Street is pocked with empty storefronts, and organizers of Occupy Klamath Falls tied black ribbons on each in protest.

Todd Kellstrom grew up here, before he became mayor, back when young men would graduate high school, work in the mills and carve themselves a life. Back when unemployment was not 12.6 percent. Over breakfast at Klamath Falls Grill — its special that morning: French toast and bacon for $5.99 — Kellstrom delved into local history and how it related to Oregon Tech.

Klamath Falls saw logging and farming begin to decline in the 1970s, in large part, Kellstrom said, “because the environmental stuff hit and just kicked the hell out of us.” So the city started to redefine itself, with highways that run in every direction, with a nearby airport and railroad, with nature as the backdrop.

Manufacturing companies started to return. Unemployment dropped as low as 6.6 percent.

In 2001, the local economy fell again, below depressed. A drought hit in the summer. Wildlife protections, mandated by the federal government, kept irrigation water from the farmers who needed it, desperately, immediately, for potatoes and hay, some $200 million worth of crops.

Residents formed a bucket brigade, stood six or seven deep, passing buckets of water for miles from the irrigation canal down Main Street. The local college basketball coach stood among them. His team would win its first national championship in 2004, the stands dotted with farmers and environmentalists, loggers and businessmen, all walks galvanized by a single force.

“Oregon Tech is the cohesive element in our community,” Kellstrom said. “It gives us something to look forward to in rough times, and this is one of them.”

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Win No. 1: In his first season as head basketball coach, Miles made $9,000 for coaching in three sports. His basketball team started 0-3. Then, on Dec. 7, 1971, Oregon Tech beat Northwest College for the first victory of his career.

A neighbor knocked on his door. “Danny, you don’t know me,” the neighbor said. “But I’m a real basketball fan. Congratulations. You’re going to win a lot more of those.”

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Before he became a coach, Miles lived with one. His father, Claude Miles, played professional baseball in the early 1900s, and when he settled with his wife and three boys in Medford, Ore., he built a baseball field in the cow pasture behind the family home, complete with a grass infield, a backstop and dugouts — Field of Dreams without the corn. (One of Miles’s brothers was murdered in Montana more than three decades ago.)

His son, Danny, known as Little General in the neighborhood, later played quarterback at Southern Oregon. In 1965 he set a record with a 77.9 percent completion percentage. He also led the nation in total offense.

When he turned 24, Oregon Tech called. Miles figured he would stop there for a year, maybe two, on the way to someplace else, someplace better. The school hired him to assist with three sports: basketball (1-21 the year before), football (0-9) and baseball (3-23). As the third-base coach, Miles remembered, “The whole first year, I don’t think I waved anybody home.” In his second season, Miles became the head basketball and baseball coach.

In those days, Miles read Street & Smith’s sports annuals, and he would write to dozens of players, even hundreds, who did not make the magazine’s first-, second, or third-team all-American list. His path crossed with Tony Gwynn and Rickey Henderson and Dirk Nowitzki, none of whom ended up at Oregon Tech.

Other schools soon started calling. Southern Oregon, then Western Washington, then Hawaii-Hilo, then Southern Oregon again. The timing never felt right. Miles stopped updating his résumé. He no longer has one.

In 1992, he and the rest of the athletic department gathered downstairs in the same conference room his team now uses to watch video. Without warning, every one of them was fired. The school dropped football. It rehired Miles and the softball coach, but both lost tenure.

Seven years ago, faced with another round of cuts, Miles “retired” but stayed on as basketball coach. In doing so, he saved two jobs. See, even in retirement, he never left. He still arrives at 8 a.m. each morning, still works deep into the night. He loves the city and loves the school, and now his grandson, a freshman guard, has joined the team.

Still, even Chris Maples, president of Oregon Tech, said, “It’s hard to explain why we’ve been able to hang on to him.”

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Win No. 400: Miles can hardly remember Nos. 200 (1981 over Lewis & Clark) or 300 (1986 over La Verne), but his next milestone proved difficult to forget. It came Jan. 19, 1990, when Oregon Tech traveled to Redding, Calif. It was the longest game in school history, and it lasted more than five hours and unfolded in two gyms.

All because one of Miles’s players shattered the backboard with a dunk.

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Miles always found basketball a selfish game. He believed, even 40 years ago, in the value of players who took charges, blocked shots and dished out assists, as opposed to more visible stars content less with winning than with scoring.

Miles called his formula the Value Point System. He has used it ever since to determine playing time and his rotation. In fact, he dedicates the first 45 minutes of practice to drills that reinforce that system, that focus on fundamentals, motion, footwork, precision.

“He thought of this in 1970,” said Mike Pisan, a longtime assistant. “That’s how he thinks. He’s a percentage guy. He was ‘Moneyball’ before the book came out.”

Armed with four decades of data, Miles can usually calculate how his team will play based on its V.P.S. score in practice, which is about 0.15 higher than in games. In each of his previous two seasons, Miles expected his teams to struggle. Their V.P.S. scores indicated otherwise. They won 30 games each year.

With players, any individual score over 1.75 is considered superior and any player who rates 1.36 or better usually ends up starting. To underscore his point, Miles pointed to Josh Wetzler, an Australian who graduated in 2009 and “couldn’t shoot a lick,” but accumulated a V.P.S. of 2.15, second highest ever in the program.

For further evidence, Miles calculated historical comparisons. Magic Johnson held a 2.08 V.P.S., John Stockton a 2.06. Michael Jordan came in at 1.52, but that also reflected the level of talent that surrounded him, with Scottie Pippen (1.58) and Dennis Rodman (1.70) also high scorers. Kobe Bryant, meanwhile, tallied a 1.34, Stephon Marbury a 1.18.

Miles never patented his formula, but he sells an instructional video online and travels overseas to conduct clinics. Teams use his system in Germany, Rwanda, Kenya and much closer to home. The Oregon Tech women’s team recently switched to Miles’s system.

So did one of his opposing coaches. John Van Dyke had never heard of Miles when he arrived at Northwest College. Now, he keeps a file in his office with questions he wants to ask Miles the minute he retires. Van Dyke saw that Miles’s teams played up-tempo and shot more 3-pointers than most teams, yet often finished in the top five in the country in assist-to-turnover ratio.

“His guys play harder than 99 percent of the teams in the United States,” Van Dyke said. “But they play smarter, too. His system changed the culture of my team. I don’t have to be the motivator to get guys to do what I want. It’s all there in their V.P.S.”

Photo

Danny Miles has coached the Oregon Tech men's basketball team since 1971.Credit
Andy Atkinson for The New York Times

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Win No. 620: After Nos. 500 (when Owl Court became Danny Miles Court in 1995) and 600 (when Miles became the winningest coach in Oregon state history in 1998), Oregon Tech traveled to College of Idaho in February 2000. The Owls needed to win to advance to the national tournament.

They trailed, with 2.5 seconds remaining, when guard Greg Regan (career V.P.S. 2.16, highest ever for the program), caught the inbounds pass and launched what Miles called a 74-footer from the top of the opposite key. The buzzer sounded, game over, while the ball floated through the air, and Idaho fans applauded an apparent victory until they realized the shot went in and counted.

“Danny was jumping up and down, doing these little pirouettes,” said Bob Kingzett, an Oregon Tech fan who heads the basketball fund-raising. “He looked like a little ballerina.”

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Most major-college basketball teams have a student section. Oregon Tech has a student section, a senior section and a special needs section. The senior section, nicknamed the Terrace, is across from the home bench on a diagonal. As “We Will Rock You” blared over the loudspeakers in December, occupants tapped their canes and walkers to the beat. (“We will, we will, rock you,” tap, tap.) Miles estimated his crowd’s median age at 55.

Behind the bench, the group known as Miles’s Menagerie occupies the first few rows. Most of them are developmentally disabled. In 2010, they took turns as honorary captains. Each year they play Oregon Tech in a charity game. (Each year they win.)

None befriended Miles, though, quite the way Steven Arnholt, Oregon Tech’s autistic superfan, did. Known to everyone as Stevie, he and Miles met in 1968. They used to run together. Stevie accompanied Miles on dates, went with Miles to church and often called at 4:30 a.m. to recap “Scooby Doo” episodes.

These days, Stevie arrives at the basketball offices most mornings, watches “Perry Mason” at 11 and “Jeopardy!” reruns after that. He performs spot-on impressions of Humphrey Bogart, John Wayne and Rodney Dangerfield. He also proofreads the game program and can recall statistics, with savant-like accuracy, from Oregon Tech victories 20 years ago.

Each year, Stevie must make 6 of 10 free throws in front of the team to accompany the Owls to Southern Oregon. If he fails, the team then votes, and Stevie stands there, peeking through the hands covering his eyes. Miles drives Stevie home after games, win or lose. After one defeat, he grabbed Miles’s cheeks. “Coach, the sun will come out tomorrow,” he said.

Oregon Tech also employs Tony Hartley as its public-address announcer. He once worked in the same capacity for the Portland Trail Blazers, and Miles lauded his “gift of voice.” Hartley, though, is blind, legally in his right eye, totally in his left. He calls games — “Here come your Hustlin’ OOWWLLSS!” — with information relayed from others on press row.

Miles, Hartley said, “stuck with me.” He added: “That’s the thing I like about him. He’s not big time, not flamboyant. He’s one of us.”

Win No. 700: As this milestone approached, Oregon Tech opened its season 22-0. The Oregonian sent a reporter here for a feature article. Oregon Tech lost one game, then two, then three, which almost never happens. Then, on Feb. 8, 2003, Miles and his Owls toppled — who else? — Southern Oregon.

Miles received a letter from Lute Olson, the longtime Arizona basketball coach. “With such a great start, I believe 800 wins is right around the corner,” he wrote.

Smart guy, that Olson.

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The current crop of Danny’s Boys includes a 32-year-old Native American forward (Scotty Riddle) who once fought fires and worked construction and “partied too much” and now plays basketball and raises three children; one player from Australia, another from New Zealand; a Mormon; and a former Mr. Basketball in Nevada, a freshman guard named Bobby Hunter, who could become the best player in Oregon Tech history.

For all of their differences — the Australian, Josh Johnson, for instance, recently saw snow and shot a gun for the first time — the players conform to the Miles way. This means no long hair, no facial hair and relatively few tattoos. Most redshirt.

All must attend class at a university as rigorous as any in the state. The school started in 1947 for military veterans to earn vocational degrees. The first three programs were auto mechanics, auto body repair and commercial cooking. Over the years, it transitioned into engineering, computer science and health sciences. It created the country’s first renewable engineering program. At one point, its job placement rate reached 98 percent.

The school seized a central role in the community, anchored by the basketball program that won so many games. Kingzett, who runs the Jeld-Wen Foundation, part of the largest company in Klamath Falls and the largest door manufacturer in the world, started roughly 14 years ago raising the money necessary to send Oregon Tech to its national tournament, now in Missouri.

If the Owls advance halfway through the tournament, the bill runs roughly $30,000. By simply passing a hat, Kingzett & Co. can raise two-thirds of that in 48 to 72 hours. But the fund-raisers did not stop there. They paid for not one, but two video boards, with pixel counts similar to those in N.B.A. arenas, for about $175,000. “It doesn’t hurt that Danny is an icon,” Kingzett said.

Fund-raisers also bought the new floor, the same one Kentucky won its N.C.A.A. regional on last season, for $170,000. It was sanded and repainted, shipped here and reassembled like a giant puzzle with help from the baseball team, coached in part by one of Miles’s three sons. The first home loss since 2008, the one from late December, was the first game played on the new floor, which fans the next day wanted Miles to remove.

This is a place where when it snows heavily, the sheriff tells fans not to attend games and Oregon Tech sells out anyway. But Miles is sometimes mildly uncomfortable with the attention lavished on his program. He changed the schedule to eliminate most flights, trimmed the budgets and split $11,000 among three assistant coaches.

“I don’t know if you can say, straight up, Danny Miles is the reason this town has stayed together,” said Steve Matthies, the sports editor at the local Herald and News. “But he’s the one guy who could run for office here and wouldn’t have to campaign.”

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Win No. 950: Miles won this game this season but barely acknowledged it. He shook hands with Pisan, his assistant coach, accepted congratulations and went back to watching video.

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Miles met his second wife, Judie, in 1987. His head turned purple, she said, “redder than a beet,” when they were introduced while both worked on a local play. He asked her out that night, and the next day they went to dinner. He sent her a dozen yellow, long-stemmed roses. In the play, he wore a pink tutu, a curly, blond wig and high-top sneakers. He still proposed a month later, then again, eight months after that.

She said yes, for many reasons. Among them:

“Danny has great legs,” she said over coffee in December. “Really, extremely muscular legs.”

They have been married since. Combined, they have 5 children and 19 grandchildren and a house with a sweeping view in a neighborhood so quaint Miles once counted 64 deer on his 10-mile drive to work.

When Judie looks at her husband now, she sees a man far different from the one she married. That man took losses so hard he could barely sleep. He freely admits that his obsession with coaching ended his first marriage. He kicked basketballs across gyms. In the game he still talks about more than any other — old habits and all that — his team led by 4 with four seconds left, was shooting a free throw and still lost.

Ten years ago Miles returned to church and committed himself to God. He has not received a technical foul in years. He admires Tim Tebow. His players said he yells half as much as he used to. One, the senior guard Kyle Gomez, said: “I would almost say he’s softened. But I don’t want him to read that and come down on us.” Another, the junior forward Alex Zerbach, whose father played for Miles, said Miles opened the recruitment with, “Now, I’m a lot different than when I coached you.”

Faith now guides Miles where superstition once did — during one playoff run he had Judie go to Burger King before games, pulling in and backing out the same way, ordering the same food; another time he left the gym during warm-ups because for weeks he had bought diet soda from the same pizza place and on that day he forgot. Where Miles once worried he would die when he quit coaching, he learned to let go.

Those close to Miles found an oddity there: the coach who won so many games cared less about winning the more victories he accumulated.

In recent years, Miles taught clinics in Africa and worked with U.S.A. Basketball’s junior national team. Judie said she began to see his coaching as more of a calling, and this year she told Miles he could coach as long as he wanted. Maples, the school president, did ask Miles to give him a year’s notice — so Maples could retire first.

“Over the years, he’s adjusted to all these issues, different decades, different players, changing times,” Pisan said. “But he’s yet to relax on his principles. Sometimes he says something, and I go, oh, my God. But that’s him. Everyone knows who he is — this collage of a person.”

Miles owns part of a local wood-bat baseball team. A history buff, he devours autobiographies and books on the Kennedy assassination.

“Next time I drive to Medford with my blinker on, I’ll know it’s time to get out,” he said.

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Win No. 523: The most talked about of Miles’s victories is not the national championship in 2004, or the second title in 2008. Instead, it took place in 1996, against Life University, an N.A.I.A Division I school that finished 37-1 that season. With seconds remaining, Miles turned to Jake Carr, a little-used reserve. Bobby Thompson, Oregon Tech’s longtime radio announcer, said: “He’s got ice water in his veins. I’ll let the crowd tell you.” Carr made the first free throw to tie the score. The crowd roared. Life took a timeout. Carr prayed. When play resumed, Thompson said: “Now, he gets another one. We’ll tell you what the crowd says one more time.” Carr made the second free throw. The crowd roared again. Oregon Tech won, 77-76.

Teammates lifted Carr, Oregon Tech’s very own Rudy, off the ground and carried him into the locker room. Reached by telephone, Carr seemed amused that the team’s fans still retell his tale. “It’s like the fish story,” he said. “I keep getting shorter and shorter. I’m not 5-7. I’m 5-11. But pretty soon I’ll be 5 feet.”

Miles’s legacy, what Kellstrom, the mayor, calls his ripple effect, his impact on thousands of players who affected thousands of others, became clear much later. A few years ago, Carr’s wife and children left the house. He went for coffee. On his walk back he heard this “huge boom” from a neighbor’s home. He believed the neighbor dealt ammunition. As he approached the house, he noticed it was on fire. He opened the door and saw heavy clouds of smoke. He heard the neighbor scream for help. He crawled on his hands and knees with bullets going off around him and dragged the neighbor to safety.

Why does one man coach in the same place for 41 years? For Stevie and Judie and Tony, for Klamath Falls, for Jake Carr and every player before and after. Miles and Carr still run into each other on occasion. Miles, Carr said, always talks about his team, the next practice, the next game, the next recruit. He never mentions all the wins.